Ticketless Fans Breach Security Gate at World Cup

By Andrew Das

June 16, 2014

FIFA and World Cup officials faced questions about security Monday after two incidents Sunday kept ticketed fans out of one match until after it had begun and nearly allowed fans without tickets to force their way into another.

In the more alarming incident, about 30 ticketless fans forced their way past security guards and through a gate into Rio de Janeiro’s Estádio do Maracanã, the tournament’s largest site, before Argentina played Bosnia and Herzegovina Sunday night. Cellphone video of the incident showed people breaching a security gate.

FIFA said none of the fans got into the game: Nine were detained by a second layer of security inside — one was allowed to stay for the match because he carried a valid ticket — while the others retreated back outside the gate when challenged. Those detained were turned over to police.

“The Plan B worked well,” a spokesman for the local organizing committee, Saint-Clair Milesi, said of the second layer of security inside.

Earlier Sunday, thousands of fans in Brasilia missed the start of France’s victory over Honduras when 30 percent of the personnel hired to screen bags at the gates failed to show up for work. Long lines could be seen snaking to the stadium only moments before the game, and the stands had thousands of empty seats midway through the first half.

World Cup officials said they had been assured by the contractor hired to provide the screeners that a new contingency plan would prevent a recurrence in Brasília and the other 11 host cities, but they also pleaded with fans attending games to arrive early.

FIFA also said it had confiscated about 50 counterfeit tickets at matches Sunday, an increase on the average of 25 to 30 per game it had seen in the tournament’s first week.